A Scarlett Rose

Chapter 5

I wasn't going to remain an infant forever, and unlike my father's fruits and vegetables, I dint just require sunlight, water and food. I was a child, a living human being, and yet they were paid more attention to.

But he wasn't completely ignorant towards me, after my brother's birth he did start acknowledging me as a person living in his home. And that my mother believed that it was the beginning, he was on his path of acceptance. And I believed in her.

Growing up I had looked up to my mother for everything, it was a different fact that she was the only one there for me. To me she was the one who knew everything, she was the best at everything, and all that there is to learn in this world it was her that I had to learn from. I loved her and believed in her, and I knew that I had to follow her footsteps. 

I loved my father as well, but whenever I went to him he dint allow for me to get close to him. I dint understand, mother wouldn't do that. He never picked me up or even played with me. But mother did, so why dint he. Silly me, I realized later in life, that in our society no one really recognizes their daughters, not more than a son at least.

I couldn't blame him completely though, I was a foolish child. Foolish enough to be jealous of my baby brother. At his one cry mother and father both would run up to him. Both would pick him up and play with him. Seeing how he always got more attention than me, I used to get jealous. I was so young I dint even know that what I felt was jealousy, but it felt like no one saw me when it came to him. 

Even so young I felt that no one wanted me, except my mother.But soon enough my brother joined her. We were companions, always playing together. 

Interesting isn't it, how as children all we look for in the another person is kindness and love. We treat the way they would treat us. We play, sit, eat, talk to them just as they do with us. Growing up the dynamic changes. We notice and judge beyond the situation, beyond the person and how they have behaved with us. And also start assuming it all in our heads, and before we know it, even before actually having a word with the other person, we find him guilty. 

Just how people around us assumed us to be corrupt and degenerate for having a dusky complexion. But as children we dint understand, why we colored children played together, and were never allowed to play or go in certain areas. Even if they did play with us, their mother's would tell them not to and take them away. 

We dint then, but growing up we were made to understand that. By the time John and I were young adults we were taught everything we needed to know about the society and leading a life within its bounds. 

We were told how the white people had the upper status in the society and we had a lower status. And we were fortunate that we were born in this family, if born in a home of a darker complexion than ours, then we would have been totally neglected in the society. 

Men are the house holders in the family, and women look after the homes and children, even help out there husbands. To work on their own, or make decisions for themselves as women, was a practice that is frowned upon in the society. Even the upper class women have enough dignity to not fall out of step from their husbands, and would also frown upon other women who neglected these ways. 

And the virtue and dignity I hold is more valuable than my life. The dresses I wear, the amount of times I leave the house, the conversations I have with men apart from my brother and father, they hold a criteria for judging my character. 

A judgy little world I lived in. John could not care less about any of these, he was already busy trying to be the star of my father's eyes. And why would he, none of the orders applied to him, no one would judge him, he was free to do as he wished. 

It was I who would be under the constant scrutiny. Mother had taught me to be careful always, she said he was a man and would get away with anything. Just like my father did with hitting and abusing her.

And at first I felt it was only this way in our household. But then I noticed It was everywhere. It was how the society functioned. The rules and regulations of the society were this way.

But unlike my brother I would question it. Why? Why was it so? I never really understood the reason behind these ways of living. And my mother would answer, that we weren't animals, we had to live in a proper and better way.

But was this any better than them really. And who decided to lead a life this way, who decided these rules and regulations? and why were they so, why not any other way of living than this?

And to this the answer never changed....It is the way it is. 

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